The full story...

A major increase in HIV infections

ELEANOR HALL: Figures released today show that the public health goal of a generation of Australians free of HIV and AIDS is under renewed challenge.

The latest data shows infections last year were 8 per cent higher than the year before, and about double the new infection numbers of a decade ago.

Tom Nightingale has our report.

TOM NIGHTINGALE: David Menadue from Melbourne was aged in his early 30s when he was diagnosed with HIV in 1984.

DAVID MENDANUE: Well I am a gay man and I had a number of relationships in the early 80s.

Obviously one of those people, or some, may have been HIV positive.

TOM NIGHTINGALE: He says he's aware of the new figures today, showing more people were diagnosed with HIV last year compared with the year before.

DAVID MENDANUE: That concerns me as a positive person who knows what the travails of living with HIV is like.

You know, I have six other illnesses now, in many ways related to the inflammation I've experienced from living with HIV.

TOM NIGHTINGALE: At the moment, someone who does want to be tested has to wait up to a week for results.

DAVID MENDANUE: Some people who go through it several times, they hate that wait.

And they sort of put it off, it's sort of a little bit of denial - "Well, you know I think I'm probably okay".

And the longer you do that, of course, your viral load of course is starting to go up, you're very infectious to other people if you are HIV positive and don't know it.

Bill Whittaker is a spokesman for the National Association for People Living with HIV and AIDS.

He and others are pushing the Federal Government to fast-track a technology known as "rapid testing".

BILL WHITAKER: Well, rapid testing is urgently needed.

We're the only country I'm aware of in the developed world not to have rapid testing, and testing should be part of furniture. You should be able to go in, talk to a health professional, have the test and get the result back.

It should be a seamless, quick, and efficient exercise.

But in Australia, people often have to wait up to a week or more for the test results, and that's very traumatic as you can imagine.

TOM NIGHTINGALE: Bill Whittaker says many people at risk of contracting HIV don't know about major treatment advances in the past few years.

BILL WHITAKER: Much of landscape of HIV treatment and prevention has changed really quite quickly over the last two years, and I think it is fair to say that Australia, along with a number of other countries, has not yet done the sort of campaigns to get the community mobilised with knowledge about these shifts in prevention and treatment.

For example, in treatment, we now know early treatment is best.

Untreated HIV is bad at all stages of the epidemic. That's a major shift in scientific understanding.

TOM NIGHTINGALE: Bill Whittaker says the effort to get people at risk more aware of the latest science should be part of an updated prevention strategy.

He says the Department of Health and Ageing has been reviewing the current strategy and the update was due at the end of last month.

The Health Minister Tanya Plibersek was unavailable for an interview.

But a ministerial spokesman says:

MINISTERIAL STATEMENT (voiceover): We have asked the Department of Health and Ageing to investigate new approaches to reducing the number of new HIV diagnoses.

We will focus on increasing rates of testing and models for rapid point of care testing, adapting models of treatment as prevention, and improving access to antiretroviral treatments.

TOM NIGHTINGALE: David Menadue supports the prevention efforts, and is motivated by stopping people suffering what he's been through.

DAVID MENDANUE: The best thing in my life, the one thing that's given me the purpose to live, has been the fact that my family accepted that. It's the people who get themselves informed on HIV, who know that you need love and support to get through this horrible thing, they're the people that really count in your life.